The Berlin wall has just come down, and former East German
intelligence officials are either destroying documents or trying to sell them
to the CIA. This novel opens with the
death of one such Stasi officer who was apparently in the “sell” camp and
possibly murdered by a competitor. Emil
Grimm, who was friends with the dead officer, now seeks to make his own deal
with the Americans. His wife is dying of
ALS and is playing matchmaker to Emil and her caretaker, Karola. Emil just wants money and passports to get
all three of them out of Germany.
Claire, his CIA contact, begins to sympathize with Emil and his
desperation and puts her own life at risk to cut a deal with him. The Russian KGB operatives, stereotypically
burly and violent, serve as the main villains here. This novel is basically an imagined story
behind the acquisition of the Rosenholz files, which gave the U.S. a trove of
information regarding alleged East German spies. The writing in this book is perfunctory, but
the pacing is decent, and the historical context is fascinating. I have not read much, if anything, about the
immediate aftereffects of Cold War and the reunification of Germany. Certainly I never considered how so many
people lost their jobs, and I don’t mean just the Stasi employees. Granted, they were engaged in efforts to
infiltrate and undermine U.S. and European government entities, but their
custodial staff, for example, were not.
I think it’s a bit risky for the author to paint Emil as someone deserving
of a bailout, but it works.
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